FMC in the News: 2012

Musicians are musicians because they play music, not because they love accounting or managing Facebook pages. But in the current climate, artists are now forced to play more roles than ever - and their art is often suffering as a result.

According to survey information just shared at SXSW by the Future of Music Coalition (FMC), more than half of all of artists find themselves juggling three or more roles, and nearly 26 percent of artists are playing 4 or more roles. “The ‘I can do it myself’ mentality is not only pervasive, but I think some artists also romanticize it,” FMC consultant Kristen Thomson relayed. read more

[…]Also intriguing: Artist lobbying group the Future of Music Coalition has spent the last year collecting and studying data compiled from working musicians, hoping to better understand where artists of different levels are generating the bulk of their income. The in-progress findings will be presented Thursday.[…]

Last week on his show Keen On, Andrew Keen wrapped up a series of music-industry-themed interviews (which included BitTorrent’s Bram Cohen by talking to RIAACEO Cary Sherman.The conversation is pretty tame, and Keen mostly just lets Sherman speak his piece, so I wanted to take a closer look at his answers and respond to some of his claims. This is not a complete transcript, but the first part of the interview is embedded below—in the next post I’ll look at part two,in which Sherman answers some questions from Keen’s viewers. read more

Next year, a time bomb embedded in the Copyright Act of 1976 starts to detonate, as valuable copyrights fall back into the hands of artists who decide that they would prefer to own their songs, rather than allowing their label and publisher to keep selling them… read more

Kristin Thomson is a community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur and musician. She is co-owner of Simple Machines, an independent record label, which released over seventy records and CDs from 1991-1998. She also played guitar in the band Tsunami, which released four albums from 1991-1997 and toured extensively. In 2001, Kristin graduated with a Masters in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware. She has been with the Future of Music Coalition since 2001 and has overseen project management, research and event programming, including Future of Music Policy Summits from 2002-2007. She currently lives near Philadelphia with her husband Bryan Dilworth, a concert promoter, and their son, where she also plays guitar in the lady-powered band, Ken. read more

As the castles crumble, does it really matter if UMG merges with EMI, anyway? YES, according to groups like Impala and now the Future of Music Coalition, which are actively lobbying on both sides of the Atlantic against the tie-up. Meanwhile, the labels have formally submitted their request to the European Commission, which pegged March 23rd as an approval date. US submissions happened two months ago, according to details shared by Impala…

I’m honored to see that the folks at the RIAA have taken the time to read our Sky is Rising report. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to like hearing the news that the wider music industry is actually thriving — because it doesn’t work well with their legislative strategy (and, remember, the RIAA’s main focus is on passing new legislation to help legacy gatekeeper record labels — not in helping artists). And, this is understandable. As we detailed in the report, as well as in my talk at Midem, a popular music industry conference, the real story of the report is that the market is thriving for artists and consumers, but is much more challenging for big, lumbering legacy players. That would basically be the RIAA’s membership. read more

There is a very interesting study being conducted by The Future of Music coalition which looks at how musicians are currently making money. The video below focuses on leveraging your brand as an artist to generate revenue…